first sunday evening in february - i, me, myself

Some days are elastic.
They stretch almost wilfully, like a function that requires to be performed. A ritual of sorts, designed to co-operate with minimum resistance and maximum ease. Yet it causes unnecessary complications to one attuned to a more regular pace.

Today is one of those days. When suddenly, the bed that you spent the last 8 hours on, wants to expel you with an alien might. When tea takes a couple of hours to brew and you scan the headlines with a strange feeling that you’ve read them before. When everything around adopts a certain fluidity and a high-pitched noise pervades your being.

As you grapple with the physics of it all, all the time muttering under your breath, you realize that you’re merely standing. You’ve been a mute spectator to whatever is happening around you. And now that everything seems to be getting back to normalcy, you just keep standing there. After all, these things are way too cosmic for you to interfere.

Hangovers. Ah!

But I don’t drink. At least not yesterday. It’s a chest full of gas. And a mind numb with an assortment of useless things planned out for the rest of the day to relegate boredom to the back benches. I like that. Be boring and hence keep boredom out. That’s my theory. If you hate something, do it all the time. That way it will soon become uninteresting. Which is why I smoke and think about sex all the time.

As I write this, I’m uncomfortable. I shift. My shoulders ache and my eyeballs are doing the shimmy. I move to the mattress with the hideous blue bedsheet. Better. Now I am sprawled in bovine fashion over a collection of floral motifs that are neither flowery nor motiffy. On the contrary, they look like a bunch of aliens who found a vat of indigo inspiring, got blue and then somehow got out and positioned themselves on a 4 X 6 cloth thinking it would be fun. Now they will probably stay there forever. Absorbing sweat, semen, phlegm and dead skin of numerous nameless strangers. Now that’s a life.

But I digress. Horizontal arrangements do that to me. Very soon I am going to feel horny as hell. Attributed to my manhood (sans underpants) in constant touch with the warm mattress under me and my feet engaged in a nervous rhythmical movement that, though annoying to watch, makes for a tingling feeling elsewhere. Somewhat mechanised but enjoyable nonetheless.

I flick a page. Roll over. Moan a couple of times. Play with the light switch. Doodle on the cigarette packet. My girlfriend’s face flashes in front of me a couple of times. I smile. Feel horny. Want tea. Stare at my pen. Think about Tagore. Think about all the women he might have done while writing that sensitive third stanza. Play with my hair. Scratch my balls. Roll over. Contemplate the benefits of a wooden floor. Think of my girlfriend again. Ok. Full Circle.

That’s how I spend evenings. I can write a complete page about my mental state of affairs but cannot write a 40 second script that sells general insurance to people who might need it.

All miseries in life are directly related to education.